Weekend was a labor of love while prepping barn to paint
Dad and I measure a good weekend by several factors: the time we spend together, the number of things we can check off of our to-do list and the quality of our Friday night dinner.
We hit the trifecta last weekend. We did some mowing on Friday evening before dinner, which was in the oven as we worked.
Dinner was full of good conversation and a garlic-and-herb-marinated pork tenderloin cooked to perfection with steamed broccoli and baked potatoes.
And on Saturday morning, we tore into our to-do list.
He hauled away some brush from earlier trimmings. I did more mowing. We worked together to change oil in one of the farm vehicles. And we put the grill and firewood rack back on the deck that he had cleaned and stained earlier in the week.
Top of the list for me was scraping the north side of the barn built by my great-great grandpa. While Dad did some housecleaning, I listened to the woodpeckers, blue jays and hawks as I scraped the bank side of the barn.
It's one of the two broad sides, but because it's the bank side, it's the shortest — easily scraped from a short extension ladder. It also is the least-often painted. Because it's the north side, it and the east side receive the least amount of harsh weather.
We have painted the south and west sides at least four times in 30 years — and both need it again in the next year or so. The north and east sides have been painted twice.
I've mentioned in the past that this barn is painted fire-engine red, or as dad puts it, “if it looks like it's bleeding, it's the right color.”
Many old barns are a dark, brownred. This is red-red. And it's this color because the barn went unpainted for many, many years when my grandpar
ents, who were married during the Great Depression, and my great-grandparents simply couldn’t afford paint.
When my grandparents finally decided they could afford it, Grandpa asked Grandma what color she would like. The demure woman who stood all of 5foot-2, didn’t hesitate.
“Fire engine red,” she said.
So when they painted that weathered, gray barn, everyone knew it.
It made that barn a beacon on a hill, and we have worked since then to honor her wish — including at a pivotal moment 30 years ago when Dad planned to re-side the barn. Metal would ensure no more painting during his lifetime, and maybe mine.
But the barn was built in the late 1800s when wood was far more plentiful than metal siding. It didn’t seem right. It wouldn’t be fittin’. I asked him to please use wood and remain true to the character of this plain barn built by a plain farmer-carpenter.
“OK,” he said, “but you get to paint it.” And every few years, I have done that, often with his help and with the help of daughters and neighbors.
We used a bright-red, oil-based paint from a Canton manufacturer the first couple of coats. When that was no longer available, we switched to International Harvester red — the same color as the 1950 Farmall my grandpa bought new — from Valspar.
I ordered five gallons of that paint in March, and it still hasn’t arrived. I’m told it’s a supply chain problem.
So we found that Majic Paints, a division of Yenkin-majestic Paint Corporation in Columbus, also makes an International Harvester red, and that it’s sold by Rural King.
Dad and I went to several Rural King stores, each of which had a couple of gallons, to cobble together enough to paint the side most visible from Dad’s kitchen window.
Except for this north side, the others have required painting more often, not only because of the beating they take from southwest winds, but also because bright-red paint fades faster than most other paint colors.
I’m sure Grandma wasn’t thinking about the quick fade when she picked the color. She just wanted a pretty barn, and after the prep work done the past two weekends, we will honor that in a couple of weeks when we finish the
scraping and apply a new coat of her favorite red.
As Dad would say, it was a good weekend.
Alan D. Miller is a Dispatch editor
who writes about old-house repair and historic preservation. amiller@dispatch.com @youroldhouse